Best way to stake tomatoes?

Best way to stake tomatoes?

Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:18 pm

This is my first post on the board so, maybe this has been discussed before. If so, please forgive me. I did search but could not come up with much of anything.

I used to just stake my tomatoes with a tomato stake for each plant and that worked okay for 40-50 plants but, now we are planting hundreds of plants for the CSA and staking and tying each plant seems a bit overwhelming. This is our third year as a CSA and the last couple years we didn't use any staking. That was less than satisfactory for us. What methods do you folks use for your tomatoes?

I am thinking about using 1inch by 1 inch by 8 foot long stakes every 5 or 10 foot and running a heavy line or cable through a hole near the top and then running tomato strings down from that to each plant. Similar to the way I have seen on the Johnny's select seed video. Has anyone used this method? Does it work? Is there a better option? Thanks.

I remember that particular method was described as typically used by commercial tomato growers in the sticky thread. Personally, I prefer not to prune my tomatoes to single stem. It sounds like a lot of work.

I like the Florida weave method for a long straight row of tomatoes. My idea of a long straight row is about 12 feet but this method is adaptable to any length row.